Boxing Day Run 2009.
After weeks of waking up to either, snow, ice, freezing fog or a combination of all three we awoke on Boxing Day to sunshine, most of the snow that had lain fairly thick in the garden the night before had melted.
Brian Robins, the event organiser, had phoned me a couple of days earlier to tell me a six mile stretch of his route was ice bound and the ford half way along was frozen, as we still had a few days for things to improve I said we should play it by ear but Fran and I would come along in the car armed with maps and plan another route on the morning if need be.
Unfortunately the thaw had come too late, the ford was flowing but the lane was still badly iced up, as were a number of the other lanes he was going to use, such a pity because Brian had volunteered to take over the organisation from Roy Parker who had run it for over twenty years and it was Brian’s first attempt at organising a run.
While I started to sign people on Fran got to work on a route she knew would be ice free, the problem being it would be a lot shorter than the original route getting us to the Green Man, where we were finishing, a lot earlier than planned, a quick phone call solved our dilemma as Mark, the landlord, said it would be alright to arrive early.
As we could not produce copies of the new route I gave the twelve riders the option of either following me or making their own way, all but three said they would make their own way.
We set off from a rather icy car park in what was now warm sunshine, although it was still rather cold the roads Fran used were fortunately ice free. Everybody else had also picked good roads and we all arrived safely at the Green Man Long Itchington where Mark was busily handing out very welcoming mugs of hot soup.
Shortly after we arrived Dave Mac turned up on his modern Triumph, he had tried to set off to the start on three of his older bikes but they all let him down with minor faults so he came straight to the finish. 
Our thanks go to Brian Robins for the route he prepared but was not able to use, all is not lost as it will probably be used during the summer, Fran Wiles for mapping out a new route to avoid the icy roads, our hosts at the Green Man, Mark and Sharon and last but not least the hardy people that rode on the day.